


among the thorns (the flower soulmark remix)

by sepiacigarettes



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Language of Flowers, M/M, Mentions of miscarriage, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:22:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26233384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sepiacigarettes/pseuds/sepiacigarettes
Summary: And he leaned over, poked at Keith’s stomach, to the base of his sternum. There lay a small green aloe.“This is your first one. It means affection, grief. Kept me up all night with your cryin’.”“Is that my one for you?”“No, son,” his pop said, gathering him close, and Keith was only six but he’ll always remember the sadness that blanketed the room then, a thick cloak suffocating the two of them. “That’s for your mama too.”In which Fate leaves Life Flowers for every pivotal moment in one’s life, and Keith nearly runs out of canvas
Relationships: Keith & Keith's Father (Voltron), Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 44
Kudos: 282
Collections: Sheith Remix 2020





	among the thorns (the flower soulmark remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Rose's Rarest Essence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23968930) by [zjofierose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose). 



> this is for [zjo](https://twitter.com/zjofierose), one of the first people I met in the sheith fandom and whose works stir up emotions in me like no tomorrow. there were so many fics to choose from and so many I started remixing, but [A Rose's Rarest Essence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23968930) ticked so many boxes with its quiet strength and beauty.
> 
> thank you to [em](https://twitter.com/copilotsheith) for organising the sheith remix this year and especially for bearing with me, and to [robin](https://twitter.com/stardropdream) and [christie](https://twitter.com/appetixing) for literally everything (mostly keeping me sane).
> 
> thank you for all your fics, zjo, and especially your exorbitant amount of patience waiting for this one; I hope it does yours justice ❤️

> Just like the rose holds her beauty among the thorns—we can gather our strength from the most unlikely places.
> 
> ― Christine Evangelou

— K —

The first mark Keith ever saw was his father’s: bellflowers, stretching from his elbow to his wrist, a giant purple constellation that gleamed in each day’s setting sun.

“Pop,” Keith once asked, tugging on his father’s elbow. “What do they mean?”

“They’re s’posed to mean ‘affection’,” his pop drawled, his hand heavy upon Keith’s head as he massaged shampoo into his hair, “everlastin’ love.”

At six, Keith had only ever known the desert and their home and his pop picking him up from the station after work. Keith would burrow happily into his pop’s arms and inhale the smoke and ash from the day as he was carried to the car, and then they’d eat dinner together and Keith’s pop would hum to him.

But the flowers on his pop’s arm were not Keith’s, for then his pop pointed at the iris that was woven into the constellation.

“This came after you were born, son. The bellflowers are your mama’s.”

And he leaned over, poked at Keith’s stomach, to the base of his sternum. There lay a small green aloe.

“This is your first one. It means affection, grief. Kept me up all night with your cryin’.”

“Is that my one for you?”

“No, son,” his pop said, gathering him close, and Keith was only six but he’ll always remember the sadness that blanketed the room then, a thick cloak suffocating the two of them. “That’s for your mama too.”

— K —

Keith is eleven when he gets his next soulmark, poppies the colour of blood dotting themselves along his forearms. Keith is too numb from the day to notice the pain as they bloom on his skin; he just stares at the marks through bloodshot eyes.

_Consolation,_ he thinks blearily, trying to recall the meanings from the weathered soulmark book they read in English last term. _Remembrance._

Jim, the station captain, squats down to his level. There’s exhaustion written all over him, like someone took an ugly black stamp and pressed it everywhere they could reach, and when he speaks, his voice is threadbare:

“We best be gettin’ you home, Keith.”

There must be words to describe the burning in Keith’s chest, and it hurts far more than the healing tattoo on his skin. He doesn’t know if it’s sadness or anger or both, but the fury of it feels like fire, like the blaze his pop walked back into when they told him not to, too bright, too hot.

In the station’s reception area, there’s a video about dust storms that loops over and over. Keith knows all the words off by heart because the station is his second home, and whenever the storms roll in, he always crawls into his pop’s arms to shelter from them, reciting the script like a mantra.

Today feels like that video, like a roaring dust storm looping over and over in his head.

Except today, there will be no one when he goes home. There won’t be his pop to kiss his head and let him drool on his arm when he falls asleep.

There won’t be anything.

“Not yet,” he manages to say to Jim to stop the panic clawing up his throat. He pulls his pop’s jacket closer around his shoulders. “Just… not yet.”

“Alright, son.”

— K —

Keith figures his next soulmark will be from loss as well. It makes sense considering his first two were, and now, watching Shiro’s retreating form, that familiar feeling is back to gnaw at his bones once more. Truly, it’s a miracle that it ever left.

Yesterday the two of them sat in the desert together and watched the sun go down. The sky was the colour of those sunflowers Keith used to see on the drive he and his Pop would make every Christmas to the coastline, and Shiro was golden, so easily slotting into Keith’s space.

His uniform was dustier than Keith’s, collateral damage from Keith beating him around the last rocky outcrop. On anyone else, it would have looked like a hot mess, but Shiro just looked effortlessly dishevelled, like this was some photo shoot he’d deigned to agree to in his spare time.

“Only a year,” Shiro told him, because they had avoided talking about him leaving ever since Shiro got the news he’d be on the mission after all.

“Yeah,” Keith said, wondering if the burning in his chest would ever stop. “Only a year.”

Time never stopped for anything but Keith wished it would.

They’d spent every day together for the last three weeks soaking up each other's company and yet Keith still felt like a desert that hadn’t been touched by rain in years.

“Hey,” Shiro said softly, and he opened his arms.

Keith contemplated staying where he was. The sunflower sky was strong enough that Keith could have wrapped himself up in it like a blanket. But why would he, when Shiro was right there, offering the furnace of himself without asking anything in return.

So Keith stepped into it, into the hearth of his best friend, and they sat there as the day exploded into oranges and reds, burrowing into the safety of one another.

“See you soon!” Shiro turns around to call, and Keith can only nod blearily and raise his hand in what’s meant to be a wave.

The gnawing is worse now; it’s moved to his lungs. Each breath stings and Keith just wants to return to yesterday when Shiro's smile had been pressed to his hair and the sun had been warm upon his back.

His back is warm now too, Keith realises, but it isn’t the hazy warmth from Shiro’s arms, it’s the repetitive scratching of a new soul mark.

Keith appraises it later in the mirror.

Daffodils are stamped across his back, the colour of his and Shiro’s last sunset.

_Of course,_ Keith thinks grimly.

Between the yellow are delicate edelweiss coiling over his scapulae and really, what’s the fucking point in Fate? All she ever does is draw marks on Keith’s skin that feel like slaps in the face. The unequaled love of the daffodils makes sense because it’s true, Keith knows Shiro doesn’t see him that way, but the courage and devotion just _hurts_ to look at.

He resolutely turns away from the mirror and pulls a shirt on.

He doesn’t look at his back again.

— K —

Fate decides to leave Keith alone for six months. He’s limited to sleeping on his side and keeping his uniform as loose as regulation allows for the fortnight it takes for his latest marks to heal over, and then Keith is left with nothing but Garrison routine and evenings spent staring at the stars.

Is Shiro out there? Is he doing the same thing as Keith: looking out from the observation deck and thinking of him?

He’s not.

(But he has to be.

He has to be, he dreamed of touching the stars, he gave up _everything_ for Kerberos, he can’t be gone, he _can’t—)_

He must be though, because Keith’s quads and glutes are on fire, have been for the last hour. Purple hyacinths are staining his skin.

Keith doesn’t have anyone else that could even register on his radar for endless sorrow, but the flowers are there for a reason. In the garish light of the Garrison communal bathroom, they look like bruises.

Keith presses his fingers against one gingerly, horror simmering in his throat.

_No,_ he thinks helplessly. _Not you too._

(But it is him.

They tell Keith the next day.

His first response is to laugh, because Fate decided to give him a head start this time.

The second is to cry and cry and cry.)

— K —

Months pass. The wet season arrives.

Keith carves out a life for himself in the shack he used to call home with his pop and wonders if there’s any way he can get lower, like, say, six feet under.

The Garrison becomes a distant memory and Keith takes solace in the harsh sun, in the unforgiving terrain, in the silence that stretches on and on.

There’s no one but him and it suits him perfectly.

The begonias on his calves suit the poppies on his wrists.

Keith watches the new marks appear over the minutes, hours, days and thinks of how he doesn’t have to use his Blade to see red on his wrists.

He won’t, though.

He promised Shiro he wouldn’t do anything stupid after that time he was so full of rage that he punched James Griffin. Shiro told him he couldn’t give up on himself and Keith had cried, because it had been _so long_ since he’d had anyone give him so much fair.

“You take care of you,” Shiro said, hand circling Keith’s wrist, thumb sweeping along the vein there like a warning. “I got us.”

But he didn’t.

He didn’t, because here Keith is, alone again, losing his mind in the desert where he grew up, where he fell in love.

It’s colder than usual tonight, the bone-chilling kind that stays no matter how many layers are put on. Keith’s pop used to stoke the hearth on nights like these and rock Keith to sleep.

But he isn’t here either.

The poppies burn.

“I really miss you, Pop,” Keith says into the empty night sky.

— K —

It starts with a meteor and ends with Keith gritting his teeth in the dark as another mark etches itself onto him.

It’s the same spot as his hyacinths, he thinks haphazardly, mind still spinning from the last couple of hours.

Who would have known that breaking into the Garrison would have resulted in _this._

It still feels like he dreamt is, as if he finally did lose his mind in the desert, but all it takes is for him to open his eyes and there Shiro is in his bed.

Keith lies next to him, studying his face, so familiar and so foreign at the same time. He’s still beautiful. The hair suits him, but the scar makes Keith’s heart clench. He can’t even start on the arm.

_What happened to you?_

The pain starts creeping higher then onto Keith’s hip and he has to suck in a breath as it scrapes over the bone. At this rate, he’s going to run out of canvas if Fate keeps coming after him.

Earlier, before Shiro crash landed, Keith had been staring up at the bulletin board, still grimy from the day’s cave exploration.

_What am I fucking doing?_ he’d thought, and then he’d tipped his head back to finish the rest of the bottle.

His pop used to have a glass of whiskey before he went to bed on the days when work had been too much to handle. Keith does the same, except it’s probably more often that his pop, and definitely much more than a glass.

And now he’s here, in bed with his best friend who he thought died in space.

Yeah, still struggling to wrap his head around it.

_What happened to you, Shiro?_

It’s another two hours before the pain subsides, and another before Keith peels back the sheets to see what flora has made a home for itself upon his skin.

A heliotrope.

Out the window, the sky has taken on a pale grey hue, a sign of the oncoming dawn. Keith figures he isn’t going to get any more sleep, so he drags himself over to his PADD to find out whatever the latest message from Fate is.

_Eternal love_ blinks up at him.

He shuts the page.

— K—

Keith sees the rhododendrons when Shiro strips out of his under suit.

He doesn’t like the healing pods because of the confinement (which Keith hates to think about) but they’re a necessary evil and Allura holds true to her promise to only keep him in for a varga.

Keith knows about Shiro’s marigolds stretching between his shoulders under his collarbones. He saw them years ago when they were at the communal showers with two-hundred-and-something other Garrison officers and cadets.

“My parents,” Shiro explained and Keith touched the two marks on his own skin in understanding.

They died in a car crash, he learned.

“My Pop died in a fire,” Keith told Shiro, wondering why he was offering up the information, wondering why it didn’t hurt him to.

(It was because it was Shiro—kind, gentle, patient Shiro.)

Keith knows about the hollyhock and carnations too, had eyed them when they were sparring together.

“I think these are for Kerberos,” Shiro said, which made sense considering he was currently standing amongst the ashes of his relationship with Adam.

But the rhododendrons are new.

Keith hesitates, then reaches to trace the line of one on Shiro’s outer thigh. Shiro watches him quietly, but he doesn’t push Keith away.

“What do they mean?”

“Danger,” Shiro sighs. “Beware. Showed up just before Kerberos.” He laughs humourlessly.

Keith’s back is still a mess of daffodils and edelweiss, his thighs and calves purple and red. Here Shiro is baring his marks to Keith and explaining them, and Keith can’t give him the same in return. But then again how can he?

Each mark he’s gotten since he was fifteen is because of Shiro and Keith can’t do that to him, can’t show the messages Fate gave him and say, “Well here’s what’s kept me up for the whole year you were gone.”

So he just lets Shiro laugh and smiles sadly at him.

They don’t talk about what Shiro told him by the fire.

— K —

As paladins, they spend months in space, and Keith soon learns he’s the only one who keeps his marks carefully hidden.

Pidge has hydrangeas crowning her knees, a symbol of her perseverance for her father and brother. Lance has adoring sunflowers winding around his wrists. Hunk has the most of the three, with frangipanis of devotion on his ankles and a hibiscus on the back of each hand as a mark of power and respect.

There are chrysanthemums on one of his calves.

“My mom was so excited for her,” Hunk says. “We all were. But she wasn’t breathing when she was born.”

Keith is choking on something, sadness or empathy or grief, he doesn’t know.

“That’s why you’ve got the poppies, right?” Hunk says, pointing at Keith’s concealed forearms.

Keith’s hand flies to cover them instinctively.

“Oh, hey man,” Hunk says. “You don’t have to explain. I just wanted to let you know I get it, kinda. Poppies, mums… there’s heaps of flowers for loss.”

Keith nods, fight or flight response dying down again.

He could tell Hunk about his Pop, about the aloe for the mom he’s never met, about all the flowers he has for Shiro.

But he doesn’t.

Pidge and Lance amble into the kitchen, drawn in by the smell, and Hunk turns to feed them. Allura and Shiro arrive a minute later, Shiro taking his usual spot next to Keith.

He grins and murmurs a heartfelt, “hey,” to Keith, as if it’s been sixty hours since they last saw each other instead of the sixty minutes.

Keith scrunches his nose up at him, smitten, before Coran enters the room and they have the normal full house for dinner.

_We’re almost like a family,_ Keith thinks suddenly, watching Pidge bicker with Lance and Hunk heap food onto Allura’s plate. Keith will be forever grateful that Hunk only subjected them to a phoeb of food goo before he put his foot down and made it his mission to find something edible for them.

_You could be my family._

But Keith stamps out that thought before it can gain any ground.

They’re just here to defeat Zarkon, just seven people thrown together by chance. They wouldn’t look twice at Keith if they’d met under different circumstances.

It won’t do to get too attached.

Keith loses everyone he loves.

— K —

When Shiro goes missing, when they lose him, Keith doesn’t know what to do anymore.

He can’t sleep on a good day, but now it’s like his body is only wired to toss and turn in the dark than get any rest.

He thought he got used to the loneliness in the desert, but this cuts him to the bone, because at least out there he wasn’t surrounded by other people, people who cried with him but would never experience the depth of Keith’s grief. At least out in the desert, he could be as destructive as he wanted and return to the shell of his body in the morning without having to explain himself.

At least out in the desert, he didn’t have Lance literally pinning him to the floor and telling him he needs to eat.

Keith could throw him off, he could give Shiro a solid challenge every time they sparred, but he’s tired, he’s so _tired—_

“Please, Keith?” Pidge says from her position on the sidelines. “It’s been a week now. Galra or not, you’ve got to eat.”

But Keith isn’t hungry.

His eyes are hot and stingy. The floor is cold under his back and Lance sitting on his chest should be the reason he’s struggling to breathe, but Keith knows it isn’t.

“Eat,” Lance says, avoiding eye contact as he prods Keith’s lips with the mini wrap Hunk lobbed at him moments after he took Keith down. “Just start with one bite.”

_Fuck you,_ Keith thinks.

But he can’t find the strength to fight their sharpshooter, and that just makes it worse because it proves the others’ point.

He opens his mouth.

— K —

The second rose appears when they’re in the Black Lion, being taken away from the facility of horrors.

It hurts, like every other mark before, but it’s nothing compared to Keith’s face. The cut throbs with Keith’s pulse, blood sticky as it oozes down his neck to the collar of his flight suit.

Keith sits in the hold as it bleeds, grateful for the quiet hum of Black’s engines. His ears are still ringing and now that the adrenaline from the fight is leaving him, Keith’s body is one huge collective ache.

And he knows he needs to pilot to the others. He knows they’re dealing with Lotor but right now it hurts to breathe.

Right now Keith just wants to sit here while Fate marks him again, just wants to give himself a minute or two to recollect the scattered pieces of himself.

The body with the face of his best friend is lying next to him, Keith’s face is _stinging_ and minutes ago, Keith was so sure they were going to die.

So he lets himself have this.

Red blooms across his rib cage, deep enough to look like an open wound. When he used to joke about running out of canvas, he didn’t think Fate would actually follow through on it.

He wonders why the two don’t overtake his entire torso—does the space mean he’ll have to go through this again? This gut-wrenching feeling of watching the one person he’d die over and over for die on him instead?

He almost doesn’t want to find out.

(But he does, when Shiro is in the healing pod, when Keith slams his fist against the glass because he can’t keep doing this, he _can’t—_

And when it happens a _fourth_ time, when Sendak is poised above Shiro, the pounding in Keith’s chest could be adrenaline, or the next rose, but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, just Shiro, Shiro, _Shiro—)_

— K —

The last mark Keith gets is after the war, after dragging the final robeast out into space to save Earth, after months of rehab and getting used to seeing his Blade family on his home planet.

It’s after the war, when Shiro and him are in the showers, and it’s when it all crumbles apart.

It’s a careless mistake, one that Keith takes no time with, simply ducks his head under the spray and blows out all the adrenaline he’d built up during his spar with Shiro.

And then he hears the gasp, like a knife, cutting through the air.

It all happens so fast.

One moment Keith is staring at the tiles and thinking about how Shiro felt plastered against him on the mats, and the next he’s diving for a towel, trying to cover all his marks.

“Mourning?” Shiro says softly.

As if it’s any surprise by now, but Keith’s brain is still buzzing static and he barks out some kind of rebuke as he tries to push past to find his clothes.

Shiro moves then, blocks the path with his ridiculously broad shoulders, and if it were anyone else Keith would shove past regardless, but it’s Shiro. There are a lot of things Keith will do for Shiro, and the marks that Shiro’s eyes are on are just proof of how many.

So he lets Shiro stop him.

And he’s heard his name pass over Shiro’s lips in plenty of different ways. There’s the disgruntled way when Keith has bested Shiro in a spar, because they’re both terrible losers and even worse winners.

There’s the sleepy way when Shiro is blinking awake in the morning over a cup of coffee. His uniform is immaculate like the picture perfect captain he is, but the way he says Keith’s name is lazy and good.

There’s the startled way, when Keith manages to outride Shiro or sneak up on him. There’s the fond way he said Keith’s name when Keith opened his eyes for the first time after defeating the robeast.

He thought he was going to die then, and it didn’t matter, as long as it meant the safety of everyone else, of Shiro.

There’s the way he said his name after _that_ moment, when he’d been so scared.

There’s this way: like it was punched out of him.

“Why do you have so many marks, Keith?”

_You weren’t supposed to see,_ is Keith’s immediate thought, because Shiro wasn’t ever supposed to know, wasn’t supposed to find Keith like this.

But it doesn’t matter now.

The damage is done.

_For fuck’s sake._

He really could push past Shiro.

But he doesn’t.

Instead he gestures to the daffodils and edelweiss, suddenly grateful that he has to find a mirror to see them, because watching Shiro’s eyes roam over them is hard enough.

Quietly, he says, “These were from the day you left for Kerberos.”

Shiro says nothing and Keith figures he doesn’t have anything left to lose after all these years so he keeps going to the hyacinths that came after the six-month reprieve.

“These showed up the day before they declared you lost. The begonias were what appeared after I was kicked out of the Garrison and going crazy in the desert.”

Shiro’s mouth is a tight line, because he _knows_ what begonias mean, nearly everyone does. ‘Dark thoughts’ doesn’t even begin to cover what Keith went through.

They don’t ever talk about the desert, the same way they don’t talk about Shiro’s stint as a gladiator. It’s a mercy to both of them, Keith thinks. Shiro would never be able to listen to Keith talk about all the times he thought of killing himself under the starry desert sky, and likewise Keith would never be able to stomach the brutal stories behind Shiro’s earned ‘Champion’ title.

When Keith mentions the heliotrope he actually laughs and Shiro makes a small wounded sound. It’s the kind that Keith will hear after he’s said something particularly depressing, like earlier when he said he wasn’t sure if the others still wanted him to be their leader after he ran off with the Blades.

“Of course they do,” Shiro said, a total hypocrite when he turned around moments later and joked about Kuron having a better jawline.

The roses are something Keith still struggles with when he wakes in the morning and sees them. They’re huge and dark, and were it not for the reasons he got them, Keith thinks he could actually like them instead of hating what they represent.

“I get another one of these giant fuckers each time I think I’ve lost you,” he says, touching the one that flares across his ribs, the one from when Keith finally learnt Shiro died all those phoebs ago when they fought Zarkon. “I’m about out of room, though, Shiro, so make an effort, yeah?”

“Keith—” Shiro says, in that horrible punched way from before, “Keith, why didn’t you tell me?” and something snaps _._

Keith shoulders past Shiro and pulls the towel around himself to hide the marks littering his body. Of course Shiro would ask him that, because Shiro has always told Keith what his marks meant and they’re friends, _best_ friends, it doesn’t make sense for Keith to have kept this from Shiro when he’s always been so open with everything else.

They’ve come a long way since Keith was thirteen and angry, staring at the card Shiro gave him after he stole his car. They’ve spent nights under the stars together, spent nights _amongst_ the stars, spoken about their childhoods and their parents and the frustrations of the day.

Keith held Shiro after he came back to Earth and Shiro was there for him when he found out he was Galra. Keith still remembers the way Shiro’s fingers trailed up and down his spine and reminded him to breathe.

This isn’t anything like those times, though.

This isn’t Keith learning to let Shiro touch him. This isn’t Shiro letting Keith take his frustrations out on a punching bag and then taking him to the city for milkshakes afterwards instead of lecturing him.

This is Keith and his body and his story according to Fate.

So he snaps, “Tell you what, Shiro? That every mark on my body since I was fifteen is from you? That everything I feel for you—everything I’ve ever felt for you—is inked onto my skin by fucking Fate herself?”

Shiro doesn’t answer, doesn’t make eye contact.

“Yeah,” Keith scoffs. “I can’t imagine why I didn’t bring that up.”

It’s just the two of them in this bathroom and Keith pouring gasoline on the floor between them with every word he spits.

And it must be the fact that Keith is so used to burning all these years, because it takes a moment to realise the familiar pain in his palm.

_Seriously? Now? Of all times?_

If there’s an afterlife like the Blades believe in, like Keith’s pop used to talk about, then Keith is going to find Fate and demand an apology for every time she’s found him.

But right now he’s too focused on the flower forming in his hand, swiftly brought to life, like Fate is compensating for her shitty timing by making it as quick as possible.

“Keith,” Shiro says, eyes trained on his own palm, the _exact same spot_ as Keith’s.

He steps forward and Keith feels frozen, like if he inhales too deeply he’ll shatter whatever this is.

There, in the center of his palm, is a perfectly formed blue violet.

The same as the healing mark on Keith’s palm.

“Shiro,” he says weakly, unable to tear his eyes away from Shiro’s outstretched hand, terrified to unfurl his own and show Shiro. “What does it mean?”

“Devotion,” Shiro answers, because he’s always been an excellent student, always known soulmark meanings whenever Keith has asked. “Faithfulness.”

Keith still can’t look up.

“Loyalty,” Shiro continues, soft and gentle like he’s afraid to break the moment as well, “and the innocence of new love.”

Is it a new love if it’s been written on Keith’s skin all these years? Or is it because they’re both only discovering now that it’s returned?

Whatever it is, Shiro’s admission is enough to make Keith extend his hand.

He holds it next to Shiro’s, turns it palm up so Shiro can see their matching marks.

And he hears the sharp intake Shiro makes, feels something within him shudder all the way down to his bones at the sound.

Shiro’s eyes turn fond, too shiny in the bathroom light, another thing to mirror Keith with.

“I love you,” he says, earnest and heartfelt and _god,_ so _hopeful._ “I love you so, so much, you know.”

Keith just drags him down and kisses him, clumsy and fierce and _good._

“Yeah,” he breathes, as Shiro wraps him up into his arms and leans down to kiss him again, just as fiercely and just as good, “yeah I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> ya girl has been Going Through It for the last few months but you are always welcome to bug me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/sepiacigarettes)


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